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Taong Grasa was a homeless man who happens to look exactly like Joaquin Fajardo. Some people say that he was the twin brother while others have more comfort in believing that he was just the doppelganger of Buwaya. One morning at the corner of De Los Santos and Makasarili Street, Taong Grasa discovered an old book from the trash can. As soon as finding out that the crumpled and torn pages are still complete, he sat under a tree and tried to read them one by one. It was not really a surprise that he can read a book in English (he learned reading from his previous "assignment" as a newspaper seller) but it's nothing than being able to complete the book without finishing his own day's collection of recyclable trash of empty water and soda bottles.

"Wow! This book is so freaking awesome I don't want to throw this one away! I wanna tell somebody, someone how cool this book is and how it blew the shit out of my malnourished and dehydrated mind for subliminally revealing that Johnny Rico is actually a Filipino!" he declares while smoking the black bat cigarette like there's no tomorrow and then pocketing the old paperback on his dirty and smelly pants.

"I need to write a review after I sell these bottles to Mang Kanor. I still got two sticks of yosi. Lunch will have to wait!" and off he ran to Mang Kanor's Butingting na Walang Ningning Junk Yard. After selling bottles and cans for a sum of forty six pesos, he immediately turned towards the nearest Internet shop while asking himself "Shall I email my friends, or my enemies instead? Shall I send the beloved President a copy of my review? F#ck it. What I want to write should be open to the public. So that lazy undergrad students, ghost reviewers, and shill people can easily plagiarize it!"

"Schmuck. I better put it on a blog so that at least I have proof that I own it since I wrote it first via the time stamps---YOWW!" he exclaims in pain as his attempt of lighting up another stick of black bat cigarette became an attempt of burning his own lousy finger.

And so for the whole hour inside Danton's Hackathon sa Maghapon Cafe, Taong Grasa conceptualized and created his blog and wrote his first ever post about Robert Heinlein's futuristic and militaristic novel and officially baptized himself as the Book Tripper of cyberspace.

5 comments:

Hello, I found The Book Tripper on Book Blogger Directory. I'm promoting my eBook titled Fancy Pants Poetry. Would you consider reviewing it?

Cover IMG: http://i.imgur.com/nYupU3z.jpgCover by: Samantha Scafidi

The poetry you'll meet in this collection will be biting, defensive, cynical and sarcastic. Dark humour is used to elaborate upon bleak life outlooks. At many times the spirit in these poems are rooted in antonymous rebellion. All that said, the reader will also encounter various instances synonymous with the proverbial "light at the end of tunnel".

I love how quirky your blog is, yet you also take literature seriously and provide your own unique commentary. I have a book I'd like to request a review for.

My novel, a literary drama (and also something of a cultural satire), is titled An Authentic Derivative.

Uprising indie rocker Garrett Sedgwick has been described as “an over-reflective, hyper-self-ware, ungrateful artist, garrulous about his own craft.” Known for his “mercurial flexibility” and “intrepid penchant for mimicry,” the reclusive wunderkind struggles to assert his own identity among a sectarian fan base who trades rumors about his promotional stunts like currency.

Cynical graphic designer Neil Oberlin has moved to Nashville as one of many over-educated millennials trying to craft authentic lives for themselves. When he gets hold of a ticket to see Sedgwick live, our supercilious narrator is reluctantly thrust into a quest to design the perfect album cover.

However, Neil’s proximity to the brooding, fickle musician is compounding his own anxieties. Haunted by his stifling religious upbringing and the uncertainty of his future, our self-deprecating narrator begins to grow paranoid. Armed with an obsequious vocabulary, our narrator must plumb through an indefinite malaise.

An Authentic Derivative is a satirical drama about music, faith, relationships, personal branding, and the conflicting scenes of a generation caught rolling its eyes at any attempt to define itself.

In the spirit of the novel's themes, as well as in the spirit of the anti-corporate narrator, I am currently in the midst of an IndieGoGo campaign to raise funding for the production and promotion of the novel. I am also promoting it on my blog, where I write primarily about language, literature, culture, politics, and spirituality.

Thank you very much for considering a review of my novel, An Authentic Derivative. I look forward to hearing back from you.

I am interested in reading your indie novel but I am not sure if I can provide you a timely review. I am busy with my work while stuck for months in the middle of two non fiction books and a GK Chesterton classic. If you can give me at least 3-4 weeks to finish your "short" novel (Reason #9 in your blog) then the deal is on. Thank you.

Greetings, Narj, I am writing to see if you might consider reviewing my new novel Raking the Dust, due out March 10th. If interested, I can provide you with a PDF version of the manuscript. Short description of the novel, as follows:

In this rogue’s tale, full of sound, fury and erotic surrealism, we meet Alex Fillameno, a writer who has traded in the machine-grind of New York for a bare bones existence in the high desert town of Taos, New Mexico. Recently divorced and jobless, Fillameno has become a regular at The End of the Road, the bar where he first encounters the alluring and enigmatic D.J, a singer and musician. Drawn to her mutable sense of reality, the two begin a romance that starts off relatively normal. When D.J. initiates Alex into the realm of sexual transfiguration their lives are turned inside-out, and what follows is an anti-hero’s journey into a nesting doll world of masks and fragments, multiples and parallels, time-locks and trauma; a world in which reality is celluloid and what you see is never what you get.

You can reach me at: johnbiscello@gmail.com Thanks for your consideration, all the best, cheers!